Fossil Fuels Just Lost the Race Against Renewables

Photographer: Daniel Acker

An earlier version of this story represented the IEA’s scenario for solar in 2050 as a forecast when it was in fact one of several possible scenarios. The IEA does not make any forecasts for specific expectations after the 5-year mark, according to spokesman Greg Frost.

The race for renewable energy has passed a turning point. The world is now adding more capacity for renewable power each year than coal, natural gas, and oil combined. And there’s no going back.
The shift occurred in 2013, when the world added 143 gigawatts of renewable electricity capacity, compared with 141 gigawatts in new plants that burn fossil fuels, according to an analysis presented Tuesday at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) annual summit in New York. The shift will continue to accelerate, and by 2030 more than four times as much renewable capacity will be added.
“The electricity system is shifting to clean,” Michael Liebreich, founder of BNEF, said in his keynote address. “Despite the change in oil and gas prices there is going to be a substantial buildout of renewable energy that is likely to be an order of magnitude larger than the buildout of coal and gas.”

The Beginning of the End

Power generation capacity additions (GW) Bloomberg New Energy Finance

The price of wind and solar power continues to plummet, and is now on par or cheaper than grid electricity in many areas of the world. Solar, the newest major source of energy in the mix, makes up less than 1 percent of the electricity market today but could be the world’s biggest single source by 2050, according to the International Energy Agency.
The question is no longer if the world will transition to cleaner energy, but how long it will take. In the chart below, BNEF forecasts the billions of dollars that need to be invested each year in order to avoid the most severe consequences of climate change, represented by a benchmark increase of more than 2 degrees Celsius.
The blue lines are what’s needed, in billions; the red lines show what’s actually being spent. Since the financial crisis, funding has fallen well short of the target, according to BNEF.

Investments needed to minimize climate change

Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance

Tom Randall

Originally published
in the Bloomberg.com
April 14, 2015